Official Style in Translation
Report on the Work of the
Government is
the report that the government writes to summarize the achievements in the last
year and the further work to be done in the upcoming year. The president will
give a speech reading from the report in the National People’s Congress ever
year and accepts consideration from deputies and members of Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference. This report will also be spread through news
media so that all people can see, listen and read it.
The
passage from the report that I choose was spoken by Li Keqiang, Premier of the
State Council, on March 5th, 2016. In this section of the report,
premier Li reported the work of government to members in National People’s
Congress. This report is collected in Ministry of Commerce of the People’s
Republic of China website (http://www.mofcom.gov.cn).
When
we were in school back home, we were required to use this report as exercise of
translation and analyzed the translation skills used in this report. We found
it is interesting how the Chinese version was translated into English. The
translation fits the principles of translation, which are faithfulness,
expressiveness and elegance. In the process of translation, some English
official styles were added depending on the need to be official. However, there
is a gap between the two languages, which make some of the official style shown
in the Chinese version disappear in the translated version.
First
of all, in Chinese governmental writing, it is common to see one sentence
coordinated with several “verbs+ object” structures, which are for showing the
order of solving problem or listing the measures of a certain situation. In
Chinese version, some sentences do not have a real subject. All the “verbs+
objects” phrases organized neatly and rhythmically, which looks and sounds like
slogans. However, those “slogans” are not correct in grammar. Thus, in English
version, “we” or “government” were defaulted as subjects of those measures or
solutions. Those sentences coordinated with several verbs were sometimes split
into two or three shorter sentences, which made the translation version more
readable than the original one. Picture below show how the slogan-like
expression was translated and organized in a totally different way. The
highlighted section was re-organized:
Based
on the rules of writing the Government
Work Report given by scholars, these reports should focus on the fact and
data, be objective, clear and concise and without flowery words. Some of the
words in the Chinese version were written in a very brief way. In this text,
there is not too many complicated words. However, one of the characteristics
and challenges of translating a Chinese government report work into English is
that there are a lot of Chinese style “new” vocabularies and phrases that have
no direct translation.
Those new words require the translator
interpret their meaning correctly and find out the most concise way to express
them. For example, the phrase which can be directly translated as “the
three periods superimposed” (means the feature of Chinese economy) was
written in English as “the slowdown in economic growth, making difficult
structural adjustments, and absorbing the effects of previous economic stimulus
policies.” In Chinese version this idea was expressed with four characters, but
in English, the translator almost gave the complete definition, so that it made
sense to overseas readers. Another example is the translated sentence “the CPC
Central Committee’s eight-point decision on improving Party and government
conduct continued to be implemented” was an extension of the original which did
not include the phrase “on improving Party and government conduct.” This allows
English readers to know what the “eight-point decision” is for. Finally, the
translated phrase “Finish building a
moderately prosperous society in all respects” replace the phrase Xiaokang society, which is an ideal society
portrayed by ancient thinkers without a matching word in English. Again, the
translator added a brief explanation of this idea. Through these three
examples, I learned that being concise doesn’t always mean you are being clear.
It is necessary to add in some explanation when needed. What’s more, because of
the unique usage in Chinese, some jargons were translated with the functions,
definitions or other explanations, which made the passage more readable.
In
Chinese version, using passive voice seems unnatural. However, in order to make
the translation version fit the needs of official style, the translator changed
most of the active voice to passive voice as a strategy of being official. The
following examples showcase moments when the translator did this:
1) “Progress has been achieved and stability
ensured in economic and social development, the main tasks and targets for the
year have been fulfilled, and major achievements have been made in reform,
opening up, and socialist modernization” was written in Chinese as “achieved
progress and ensured stability in social development, fulfilled the main tasks
and targets for the year, made major achievements in reform, opening up, and
socialist modernization.”
2)“Momentum was created for reform and
development through opening up” was originally written as “opening up promoted
reform and development.”
3)
“The CPC Central Committee’s eight-point decision continued to be implemented”
has the same meaning as “continued to implement the CPC Central Committee’s
eight-point decision.” The use of passive voice in English emphasizes the
actions that government take.
In
this report, the original author used fixed words with specific activities. The
ideas “increase” and “promote” have several different verbs in Chinese, some of
them are commonly used in daily life while some of them have their fixed usage.
When we were doing the translation exercise, we were required to remember those
fixed usages so that we could react faster in finding out the best word to
describe the activity. For example, the word “达到”
is matched with the word “reach”: “GDP reached 67.7 trillion yuang”, “The
contribution of consumption toward economic reached 66.4%”. The word “建设” is most commonly known as
“construction.” However, in this report it was translated with different words
based on what activity or noun followed it. For instance, when the word was
used with “urban infrastructure”, it was matched with “development”; when it
was used to describe “an important role” as an adjective, the translator used
the word “constructive”; when saying “first-class national science centers and
technological innovation hubs” were “constructed”, the word was replaced with
“built”; when saying “pilot reform zones for all-round innovation” were
“constructed”, the word was replaced with “establish”. The different usages of
the same word show the diversity of translation and English writing.
In
Chinese, people like using some visual rhetorical devices that are familiar
with most people to emphasize the meaning, in order to make their writing
vivid. Even in official style, some of those usages are allowed. However, in
the process of translating, if the translator translated Chinese into English
directly, it would not make sense to non-Chinese readers. For example, the
expression “take up half of the mountain” was translated as “The service sector
as a proportion of GDP rose to 50.5%,) accounting for more than half for the
first time”; the expression “Flood irrigation” has nothing to with irrigation
but actually means “adopting strong stimulus policies that would have an
economy-wide impact”; the expression “Chinese economy will relive in the bath
of fire” sounds ridiculous, but it actually means “reinvigorate the economy and
ensure its dynamic growth.” The missing of some rhetorical devices sometimes
make this report clearer and easier to read. However, some emotion also lost in
the translation. “Take up half of the mountain (of service sector)” sounds
powerful so that I feel proud of this achievement.
Ideally, the Chinese
version of Report of Government Work
should be able to read by all people, but the actual audiences are primarily people
who are directly connected to it, such as the National People’s Congress and
deputies and members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The
content in the government work report is actually related to people from all
walks of life, but because of those jargons and not common usages used in the
report, it is excluding to most people. There are members of the audience who
received a decent education and have the “common knowledge” of governmental
issues. For example, deputies of National People’s Congress; people in the
financial field, education field, industry field and so on, who need to know this
report well, so that they can see how the policy would affect their filed in
the coming year and figure out the best to fit it. Another type of audience
might be student who was preparing for college entrance exam or GRE, because
this government report would be one of testing points in the Policy test. However,
there are also people in poor area, or in a lower class in the society who also
have close relationship with this report. They maybe lack the ability to read
and they are not able to understand those broad and vague words. In this
respect, the jargons explained in the translated version, if translated back
into Chinese, would be useful to them because the jargon words were replaced
with brief explanations.
The special style of the government work
report requires a special way of translation. For the three principles of
translation, the translator had to give up something official in Chinese
government writing, but they also made necessary additions so that the
translation will make sense to non-Chinese readers, too. The appropriate
additions and deletions reflect the flexibility of translation. Some official
styles used in the original version had to change into another kind of official
style in the translation. Understanding the gap that exists between the two
languages, the deletions and additions in the process of translation helps
audiences understand context and culture better.
Work cited
Report on the Work of
the Government.
(2016). Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China. http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/i/jyjl/l/201603/20160301282908.shtml
Li, L. The Functional Translation Theory and
Translation of Report on the Work of the Government. Fujian Translators Association. http://www.fjfyxh.com/article.php?id=23012
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